


When the Stars Align

by circ_bamboo



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Light BDSM, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Multi, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 18:30:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3259949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circ_bamboo/pseuds/circ_bamboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Who's this guy?" the woman said, as she brushed strands of brown hair out of her face.</p><p>"Sam Wilson," Sam said, but then the truck hit a bump, her bare fingers hit his forearm, and it felt like a star burst instead Sam's head.</p><p>(Maria/Sam/Bucky, soulmates AU.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the Stars Align

**Author's Note:**

  * For [abysmal_seraph (absymal_seraph)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/absymal_seraph/gifts).



> So many thanks to ArwenLune/primarybufferpanel for being the best of betas and calling me on leaving out stuff. Thanks also to F. for being a great person to bounce ideas off of, and for helping me mentally straighten out exactly how I was going to make this work. Thanks also to the mods of the challenge, and to abysmal_seraph for giving me such juicy options to work with.
> 
> Please note that there are mild references to awful things having happened to Bucky, and proceed as you see fit.

"Who's this guy?" the woman said, as she brushed strands of brown hair out of her face.

"Sam Wilson," Sam said, but then the truck hit a bump, her bare fingers hit his forearm, and it felt like a star burst instead Sam's head.

The woman -- whoever she was -- pulled back and looked at him, blue eyes wide. "Maria Hill," she said. "Can we --"

"Yeah, when it's over," Sam said, and once she'd unlocked their handcuffs and Steve's frankly-ridiculous shackles, he reached back to scratch at the new soulmark -- Maria's name in her handwriting, although he couldn't see it yet.

"Did you two just --?" Steve asked.

"Soulmates, yeah," Sam said. "We'll deal with it later. How we gonna get out of here?"

\--

Sam's parents were soulmates; his mother had his father's name inscribed just below her collarbone, and she loved wearing scoop-neck shirts to show it off. They'd met in church, brushed hands surreptitiously the way that teenagers often did when the idea of a soulmate was still romantic, and that had been that. Some ninety-four percent of people had the possibility of finding a soulmate, and about sixty-five percent of people actually did. Maybe a quarter of soulmates found each other and left it at that, which left the rest -- about half the adult population -- usually involved in some sort of romantic or sexual relationship.

It didn't mean that the relationship would be easy, or that it would even work out; his dad had moved out for about three months when Sam was eleven, and they had met weekly with the pastor of their church for another couple of years after he moved back in. Some people actively avoided looking for their soulmates; they didn't so much as touch another person for years on end. The idea of something predetermined like that frightened them, even though science still hadn't come up with a good, universally-accepted explanation for how exactly it worked. There was a touch, a flash of light inside the head, a new signature mark similar to a tattoo, and an intense desire to touch the other person again, and that was it.

Sam had made it to thirty-six without finding his soulmate, not through any particular effort of his own, and he'd gone through finding soulmates romantic to frightening and back to romantic again. And now that he had one, and she kicked ass like that? Definitely romantic.

\--

Sam completely expected to see stars when the Winter Soldier clocked him in the jaw after ripping off one of his wings, but not _that_ kind of stars. "Aw, c'mon, man, what the _hell_ is this?" His left pectoral itched like hell, and hey, that would answer the question of what the Winter Soldier's real name was, but _why_ did he have to be soulmates with Maria, who seemed to be perfect, and _also_ the guy who was trying to kill him?

The Winter Soldier had paused for a moment, but not long enough for Sam to gain any sort of advantage, and he recovered quickly enough to punch Sam again.

"Hey, stop it!" Sam hollered. His head hurt, his neck hurt, and he couldn't quite make himself punch his soulmate. He didn't know if he could run fast enough to take off, and they weren't close enough to the end of the helicarrier to jump, so he was stuck, unless --

\-- someone jumped out of a helicopter and punched the Winter Soldier in the face, which was exactly what Maria did.

"Thanks!" Sam said, and took a couple steps forward, meaning to grab her and jump off the 'carrier -- she had to be lighter than Steve -- but Maria was rubbing her knuckles and looking at the Winter Soldier as if he'd just punched _her_.

And worse, the Winter Soldier was looking back the same way. Sam recognized that look. "Oh, God," he said. "All three of us?"

"Looks that way," Maria said, a little hollowly.

The Winter Soldier turned tail and _ran_ , nearly as fast as Steve did, and jumped off the edge of the helicarrier, landing on a passing quinjet.

"Fuck," Sam said.

"Yeah," Maria said. "Let's go."

\--

Afterwards, standing in the attached bathroom to Steve's hospital room, Sam pulled off his shirt and looked at the name "James Buchanan Barnes" inscribed on his chest. "This his handwriting?" he asked the unconscious supersoldier.

Steve didn't answer, unsurprisingly.

\--

Maria had an apartment in DC, separate from the Triskelion, although she'd mostly lived at work. "It's nothing special," she said, "but it's not, you know, exploded. Would it be okay to talk there, or do you want some place more neutral?"

"Your place is fine," Sam said. "Probably safer than anywhere neutral that we could find."

"True," Maria said.

It really wasn't anything special, just a one-bedroom with an almost-unused kitchenette and a single print on the wall, a Cezanne still life with fruit and a skull. But the couch was long enough that when Sam took one end and Maria took the other, he saw her visibly relax. 

He wasn't sure if that was a good sign or a bad one. For that matter, he wasn't entirely sure how he felt about any of this. She was attractive, sure, and his soulmate -- one of his soulmates -- obviously, but all he really knew about her was that she liked kicking ass.

And post-Impressionism, apparently, although the print could have come with the apartment for all he knew.

"Would you like something to drink?" she asked, popping up off the couch less than a minute after she'd sat down. "I don't have much, but I could probably make coffee."

"Water would be great," Sam said, and she returned with two glasses of water, setting one on the coffee table in front of him.

She sat down again, and then jumped up to go grab her cell phone out of her pocket, setting it on the table, and when she sat down for the third time, he said, "What's got you all worked up?"

"Can't you guess?" she said, her lips twisting wryly.

Rather than acknowledge her point, he sprawled on his end of the couch. "Can't resist all this?" he said, gesturing at himself.

"Yes, that's exactly it," Maria said. "It's impossible for me to keep myself on my half of the couch. Can't you tell?" She hadn't moved an inch, and kept herself a little too still as she spoke.

Sam grinned at her, and then let the smile slide off of his face. "But really, though," he said. His fingers itched to touch her, but he knew that was the bond talking. Although he'd never felt the compulsion to touch before, it was unmistakable. He could keep his hands to himself, though.

"Yeah," she said. "We're here to talk, we should talk."

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours," he offered.

"I felt it, you felt it," Maria said with a shrug, but she stripped her t-shirt off and turned around to display Barnes's name on her left shoulderblade and Sam's just below her collarbone.

Sam did the same, although Barnes's name was a little lower on his chest and Maria's was on the opposite side of his back. The placement meant nothing, although a ton of researchers had tried to ascribe meaning to front side versus back side, and left versus right. He kinda wished Maria's name was on his chest, though, so he could see it without effort.

He pulled his shirt back on and said, "So how we gonna make this work?"

"What are we going to do about Barnes?" The words were a little muffled while the shirt was over her face, but he understood her just fine.

"Nuh-uh," Sam said. "You know what, right now we're gonna worry about the two of us. We don't need him to figure out what's going on here."

Maria sighed and looked at the ceiling. "Okay, fair enough," she said, and took a long drink of water before sighing again. "I don't -- I'm pretty sure we're not going to be compatible in the bedroom," she said. "So we might as well figure that out now and at least know if we're going to keep it platonic or not."

"What makes you say that?" he said. "You not interested in men, or something?" It would be strange, with two male soulmates, but not unheard of.

"I like men just fine," she said, and looked down at her hands for a moment. "But I'm really only interested in people who will let me take control."

Sam's heart gave a great thump in his throat, and he just _knew_. "You mean like this?" he said, and slid off the couch gracefully to land on his knees, right hand grasping his left wrist behind his back, head bowed.

There was a long moment of silence, in which he thought he'd made a horrible mistake, but then he felt Maria's fingertips ghost over the crown of his head. "Yes," she breathed. "Exactly like that. You've done this before, haven't you."

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

"And it's something you -- something you enjoy?"

"Very much, ma'am," he said.

"Oh, Sam," she said. "I'm going to take _such_ good care of you."

He looked up at that, and whatever he was going to say died in his throat at the look of wonder on her face. The look dimmed a little, though, and she said, "What?"

"That wasn't what I was expecting you to say, ma'am," he said.

Maria tipped her head to one side. "Oh?"

"Kind of expected you to say you were going to make me hurt and like it."

"Oh," she said, and shook her head. "No, I get enough of that with my day job. Unless that's your thing?"

"I like it sometimes," he said, "but nah, I don't need it."

"Okay, we'll see," she said. "You can sit back on the couch. We need to talk before we do anything and, honestly, probably we need some time dating." She gave a crooked smile and reached behind her head, pulling the pins out of her bun and letting her hair fall around her face. "I'm not against sex on the first date, but it tends to be the only date in that case."

"Oh, sure," Sam said, and returned to his corner of the couch.

"Hard limits?" she asked.

"We're going there first?"

"As good a place to start as any."

"Okay," he said. "No bondage, no humiliation, no bodily fluids other than spit and come, no injuries that would harm my ability to do my job. Orgasm denial is good; ordering me to do stuff is great. Role-playing is fine, but no slave/master stuff or military other than 'ma'am' or 'sir,' if you prefer that. Some sensory deprivation is fine; gags are okay sometimes but no breathplay."

"In short," Maria said, grinning, "you're as fluffy as I am. Good. And 'ma'am' is fine with me. Anal play?"

"Yes, please."

"Well, you know, with your other soulmate being male, I kind of expected it."

"You've got two male soulmates, are you into DP?" Sam asked, one eyebrow raised.

"Well, no," she admitted, and they laughed. 

"Come here," she said, once they had sobered a little, and he scooted across the couch to the place she indicated. She raised her hand to his face and said, "May I?"

At his nod, she cupped his cheek, and then slid her hand around to the back of his head and drew him in for a gentle kiss. He let her control everything about it -- the pressure, the duration, whose tongue went where -- and it wasn't perfect, but the potential behind it was tantalizing. She tasted a little metallic; her lips were chapped but warm, and she kept all her movements slow and deliberate.

When she pulled away, he felt her reluctance echo his own, but he said, "Yeah, I should get back to the hospital and let Natasha sleep some."

Maria nodded. "And I have an organization to, well, re-organize."

"Are you the director now?" he asked.

"No," she said. "That's going to -- to someone else. Well, sort of. I've still got the WSC to wrangle, or what's left of it, and a whole bunch of people to double-check, and . . ." She sighed. "It's a mess."

He leaned forward and rested his head in her lap for a moment, face turned to the side, and he didn't have to look up to see her relax. One finger traced over his hairline on the back of his neck, and he shivered a little.

A shadow passed in front of the window, and given that she was on the third floor, that was strange enough to have both of them off the couch, Maria with a gun out and Sam with a kitchen knife he hadn't actively registered grabbing in his hand. She sidled up to the window, indicating for him to do the same on the other side, and yanked the sheer curtains to one side.

There was nothing directly outside the window; he couldn't see anything from his angle, either, and he indicated as much with a shake of his head. Maria nodded and took a step or two closer, looking above and below the window as best she could. "Clear," she said after a moment. "I don't know what that was. Probably a bird."

"Yeah, probably," Sam said. He didn't know why, but he was pretty sure it wasn't a bird.

They left the apartment at the same time and separated with a lingering hand-clasp; she promised to stop by the hospital later, and he said he'd text if anything changed.

\--

Natasha was sitting by Steve's hospital bed, a tablet on her lap; she looked up when Sam came into the room and hit the button to blank the tablet screen. "Hey," she said.

"Hey. How's he doing?"

"No change," she said, her lips thinning in a poor attempt at a smile.

"How are _you_ doing?"

"No change," she said again, and looked down at her hands. 

That was an awful lot of tells in one short exchange, and Sam figured they were either intentional or she was really, really out of it, but he couldn't tell which one yet. "You wanna get some food, some sleep, something?"

"Could use something to drink," she said, stretching. "How's Maria?"

An intentional change of topic, but Sam could use that. "She's okay. Trying to get some work done right now, but we're gonna see about dating, since that's what you were asking." He looked over at Steve's prone form, where the letters of Natasha's name were clearly visible through the thin material of his hospital gown. It wasn't the first time he'd seen her name; Steve hadn't bothered hiding it while wandering around Sam's place in his undershirt, and he'd caught a flash of Steve's name on Natasha's hip when she'd stretched to reach something. "Speaking of soulmates . . ."

Natasha's face froze. "We're not talking about it."

"We as in you and me, or we as in you and Steve?"

"Either. Both. I mean -- he knows I can't --" She stopped and took a short breath. "But Maria isn't your only soulmate."

"No, she isn't," Sam said. "But what we do about _him_ isn't just a matter for the two of us, so we're holding off on that one."

"Ah," she said.

"You and Steve -- that's between the two of you, but --"

"I don't need counseling about it," she said shortly, and stood.

Sam held his hands up. "Okay, okay, I'll stop."

Natasha sighed. "Please remember that you didn't spend the first however many years of your life being terrified that one of the people you were sent to kill might end up being your soulmate."

"No," he said, tone as even as he could manage, "but I did worry about finding a soulmate in a war zone and then seeing them get killed. Yours is at least mostly indestructible, and you won't ever have to kill him."

"Unless I have a second one, like you."

"Yeah," Sam said bitterly. More than one soulmate -- more than two people in a set -- was pretty rare, so Natasha probably wouldn't have to worry about it, but still.

"Okay, point taken," Natasha said. "But that doesn't make it much easier for me. At least, not yet."

"Steve's a good guy."

"You think I don't know that?" The edge was starting to come back into her voice. "What do you want me to do?"

"You know he'll heal faster if you touch him."

"That's never been definitively proven."

"It has," Sam said, "although there's no quantifiable difference between soulmates touching and random people. But I think he'd be more comfortable if it was you." Adult humans -- past the age of thirteen, when soulmarks started to show up -- were largely touch-deprived, and that impacted healing ability. It would take a huge social change to fix that for everyone, but Sam would do what he could.

"I kissed him," she said. "When we were in the mall, trying to hide from Rumlow and company."

"And?"

"I think he was lying when he said he'd kissed someone since 1945," she said, one corner of her mouth ticking up a little bit.

"Once he wakes up, you can fix that," Sam said. "Just -- don't hold yourself so far apart from him."

"We'll see," she said, and headed for the door. "I'm going to the cafeteria. Do you want anything?"

Sam shook his head. "I'm good."

"And when you get your third back, you know, you have to take your own advice."

"Yeah," he said. "I know." He didn't correct her 'when' to 'if,' but they both knew it was there.

\--

Steve woke up a day or so later, while Sam was there and Natasha was catching a couple hours of sleep somewhere undisclosed. Sam texted both Natasha and Maria while the doctors checked Steve over, and although they recommended another week under observation, Steve shook his head and said he'd be leaving the next day.

He did, in fact, leave the next day, and Maria, Sam, and Natasha helped him settle into a nondescript apartment in a block of nondescript apartments in an entirely different part of DC from where Sam had lived.

(It might have worked, to bring Steve to Maria's place, but the night before he woke Maria and Sam went back to her apartment to find that it had been tossed, a crude HYDRA logo scratched into the wall. Maria shrugged philosophically, packed a bag full of a few miscellaneous items, and decamped with Sam to a hotel.)

Steve was pretending as hard as he could that nothing hurt, but the lines between his eyebrows said otherwise, and Sam dug around in the hall closet until he found more pillows. Rather than give them to Steve, though, he handed the pillows over to Natasha, who gave him a dirty look before kneeling on the couch and helping Steve put one pillow behind his head and another under his knees. She claimed a third one for herself, setting it on the floor by the end of the couch. After she'd settled herself in, she picked up Steve's hand and put it on her neck; Steve's face lit up, and he squeezed where her shoulder and neck met gently.

Sam watched it all with an approving smile from his place on the loveseat; Maria returned from the kitchen and paused for a second to look at the tableau. The look on Natasha's face clearly dared Maria to say anything about where she was sitting, but Maria didn't. "There's nothing edible in the kitchen," she said. "Do we want to get takeout?"

"Wouldn't a credit card be traceable?"

"I got that covered," Maria said. "Pizza? Chinese?"

"Pizza," Steve said, sitting up a little and then wincing. "Please. And, maybe, one and a half or two pizzas for me?"

"Really?" Sam said.

"Healing wounds like this takes a lot of calories," Steve said, shrugging.

"Fair enough," Maria said. "So, our choices are . . . er . . . " She scrolled through the screen on her phone. "Looks like our best choice is a place called Pizza Pino's, but I could probably be talked into picking up pizza from Domino's if that would be better for anyone."

"Pizza Pino's?" Steve said.

"A mom-and-pop place that still uses a credit-card machine that I can convince not to store any information at all," she said. "If it's terrible, well, we'll get something better when I get some cash tomorrow."

"Let's do Pizza Pino's," Sam said.

It took about five minutes to agree on their final order -- two double pepperoni, one Hawaiian, one sausage and mushroom -- and another half hour for the pizza to be made, and by the time Maria left to go pick the food up, Sam was starving. He couldn't even imagine how Steve felt.

He followed Maria down to a different non-descript car than the SUV they'd driven over, and then buckled himself into the passenger's seat as she calmly threaded her way through DC traffic. She took a strange route; Sam didn't know this part of town as well as others, but he was fairly certain they'd passed that particular Starbucks at least twice so far.

"What's going on?" he asked, when he saw the same ivy-covered fence for the second time.

"We're being followed." She sounded very matter-of-fact about the whole thing. "Black Suburban back there."

It looked like any of a dozen different government vehicles, and that, in and of itself, sent a chill down Sam's spine. "Do you know who it is?"

"Not SHIELD," Maria said. "At least, not the good guys of SHIELD. Maybe HYDRA. Maybe one of the other alphabet agencies, although their defensive driving techniques are . . . not in line with what the NSA teaches, at least."

"Well, that's not encouraging," Sam said. "What do you need me to do?"

"Nothing right now," Maria said. "They're not -- I've had to slow down for traffic twice and they stay the same distance. They're on a recon mission, not attacking us. So I'm going to take the long way there, so I hopefully don't have to take the long way home."

"You want me to text Natasha?"

"Text her from my phone." Somehow without taking off her seatbelt, Maria got the phone out of the pocket of her jeans -- not loose-fit, either -- and handed it to Sam. It was still warm from her body heat, and he wrapped his hand around it for a moment before thumbing it open.

"No passcode?"

"Biometrics, and I unlocked it as I handed it to you," she said.

"Ah." He sent off a quick text to the contact labeled 'Nat'-- _Taking the long route there, black SUV on our tail._ \-- and locked the phone, setting it in the cupholder between them. If he looked just right into the side view mirror, he could see the car following them, but he couldn't see anything inside the car. "You want me to turn around, see if I can get eyes on the driver?"

"Smoked windows," Maria said. She looked up into the rearview mirror and added, "Probably male, probably around six feet tall, is all I got, but that describes a lot of people. Including you."

"Yeah," Sam said. "It's a start, though."

A lucky break had Maria swerving around a parked Porsche onto a one-way street; fortunately it was deserted, because she was going the wrong way. Sam gripped the handle above the door and thought very hard about praying, but didn't want to disrespect his mama and her views on religion. A second swerve put them in a back alley, and a quick turn had them back on a major street, going the correct direction and hey, just by the pizza place.

There were fifteen-minute pickup-only spaces in front of Pizza Pino's, and Maria parked in one, grabbed her phone, and jumped out of the car. Sam followed her, and five minutes later they had four pizzas that smelled amazing and yet another different car, a Ford sedan in a grayish-brown color. 

"How do you get all these cars?" Sam asked.

"Don't ask," she said. "Well, no, you're welcome to ask. It's a service like ZipCar, only, you know, more discreet."

"Huh," he said. "Good call. Did we lose him?"

"I think so," Maria said, "but I'm not taking any chances."

She did take a fairly direct route home; it only took about ten minutes to get there, which was nowhere near long enough for the pizza to get inedibly cold. But instead of parking in the front like she had before, she pulled around the block, left the car in what seemed to be a pre-ordained spot, and cut through between two buildings, ending up on the back stoop of their building. "Nice," he said.

"Not as good as I wish," she said, but she smiled at him.

Steve smiled at him more when they came through the door, but that was probably because Sam was holding the pizzas.

"You lost the tail?" Natasha said to Maria as Sam found a plate and handed it to Steve, to at least pretend the pizza was spending more than a second between the box and his stomach.

"As far as we could tell," Maria replied.

It said something about Natasha's respect for Maria that she merely nodded and wandered over faux-nonchalantly to look out the front window.

Steve ate one and a half pizzas and promptly fell asleep. Natasha took up her post in front of him, leaning her head back against his arm. Maria curled up on one end of the loveseat with her fourth piece of pizza half-eaten on the plate in front of her, and Sam took the opposite end after he'd finished his sixth piece.

"Now what?" he asked, after a long moment of silence.

"Now, we nap off the food coma," Natasha said with a yawn. "Sam, you've got first watch."

"Okay," he said, a little bewildered. He was even more confused when he watched Natasha close her eyes and seemingly fall straight into sleep, but hey, if she was napping on Steve, it was good for both of them.

Maria stretched out her legs and pushed her toes under Sam's hands, lying in his lap; he got the hint and started rubbing her feet. She made a few small noises under her breath that he wished he could hear more of, but they were in a room with two people who were at least pretending to be asleep. Eventually, when he was just rubbing small circles over her ankles, she rested her head on the back of the couch. "Wake me up in a couple of hours," she said quietly, and he nodded.

\--

In the morning, Steve was -- well, not as good as new, but much better; he could move around and he didn't quite look like the ninety-five-year-old he actually was. Sam, having actually had medic training, prodded gently at what looked like year-old scars on Steve's stomach and shrugged. "I don't think we have a timeline on how this is going to work."

"We're safe here for at least another couple of days," Natasha said. "Possibly longer than that."

"And then what?" Sam asked.

"I don't know," Natasha said.

"We need a cover," Maria said, leaning against the wall, hands in the pockets of her jeans. "Well, I need a cover, and Steve needs somewhere safe to finish healing, Natasha needs shelter, and then you'll need a home base."

"You sound as if you have a plan," Steve said. He was sitting normally on the couch, Natasha's toes tucked under his thigh, with only the expected amount of lines in his forehead.

"I do," Maria said. "I've been in contact with Pepper Potts."

Sam was pretty sure she meant the Pepper Potts who was CEO of Stark Industries, but kept his surprise to himself.

"Good choice," Natasha said. "But what are you going to do about Stark?"

"Use him," Maria said bluntly. "He has money, he has a big fucking tower in New York City, and he can be manipulated fairly easily. Also, not only was he on the list of targets for Project Insight, he designed a significant portion of the non-weapons parts of the helicarriers. He'll do what we need him to do."

"You sure about that?"

"Pepper is," Maria said, and Natasha nodded.

"So when do we go to New York?" Sam asked. "'Cause I still have some semblance of a life down here, and I gotta clean all that up."

"A week, minimum," Maria said. "How long do you think you need?"

"I can do it in a week," he said.

"Okay," she said. "T minus seven days, and we're moving to New York."

\--

Steve was getting restless, Sam could tell. Not that he was even bothering to hide it; he was pacing around the apartment -- a little slowly, but pacing nonetheless.

"You okay, man?" he asked, on Steve's fifth circuit past him.

"I'm fine," Steve said, almost automatically, and then stopped, only a few feet away. "I hear they can break soulbonds these days."

Sam sucked in a sharp breath. "Well, they can remove the mark, similar to removing a tattoo, and there's been some luck with certain kinds of psychotropic drugs removing the compulsion to touch, but it's not a hundred percent, and with your metabolism --"

"No, not me," Steve said, and Sam breathed a sigh of relief. He didn't want to deal with the Black Widow on some sort of grief-stricken rampage. "You," Steve said. "Are you going to keep Bucky as a soulmate?" 

In hindsight, Sam probably should have known that was coming. It took him a little aback, though, and he blinked.

Steve set his shoulders back a little at Sam's non-response and said, "Bucky rescued me from the river. He's why I didn't drown back there. He saved my life, Sam. You know what that means? That there's something _there_ , that he's -- that we can _save_ him, Sam. I don't know what they did to him, but we can help him, I know we can --"

"You know what," Sam said, interrupting him. "I'm gonna try."

Steve looked a little surprised at that, his eyebrows flying up, but Sam just continued. "He deserves a chance, not because he's my soulmate, or even because he's your friend, but because he's a person."

Steve nodded. "So you're not going to break the bond?"

"Not unless I have no other choice. I can't necessarily say what the relationship is gonna look like, but I'm not gonna break the bond unless he makes it so we have to."

"Which would be how?" Steve asked.

"I don't know, killing the president?" Sam sighed. "I'm gonna fight for him. Can you see me doing anything other than that?"

Steve twisted his lips to one side. "No, I can't," he admitted. "I hope it works out. I want my best friend back," he admitted. "I know he won't be the same, but still."

"I want to say we can do it, but I can't be sure," Sam said. "So I'm not gonna make any promises I can't keep. But I can say I'll try."

"I believe you," Steve said, and pulled Sam into a short hug. Sam patted him on the back carefully. "I can't think of anyone better to be my best friend's soulmate." He clapped Sam on the arm gently.

"And Maria?" Sam asked.

"Her, too," Steve said, and added, "If it works out, someone'll have to keep the two of you jokers in line."

Sam chuckled. "I hope you're right."

\--

Sam packed up his apartment and called the VA, arranged to take an extended leave of absence and asked about opportunities in New York City. His boss was sad to lose him but hopeful about his chances of employment with the VA in New York, although she warned him that New York paid the same as DC but the cost of living was higher -- even as bad as DC was.

"I'll be okay," he said, and she wished him luck.

Maria was off doing something during the days, Sam really didn't know what; while Natasha was mostly on Steve-sitting duty (by her own unspoken choice), she did disappear occasionally and return without explaining herself. At least, she didn't tell Sam what was going on.

So around Thursday (they were moving Sunday), Sam found himself a little bit at loose ends. He puttered around in the kitchen for a half hour or so and then, seeing a jar of spaghetti sauce, had an idea.

Maria was in the second bedroom, the one they'd claimed for themselves, although everyone's sleep schedule was such that he and Maria had actually been in the bed, together, sleeping at the same time for maybe three hours over the past four days. A laptop -- not the one she'd been using a couple days ago; this one had the Stark Industries logo on it -- rested on her knees, and she looked up over it at him. "Hi there," she said.

"What are you doing tonight?" he asked.

"Oh, probably the same thing I did last night," she said, with a twist to her lips. "Why?"

"Would you like to go on a date with me?"

"A date? Like, a real date?"

She was making fun of him, but it was gentle, and he returned her smile. "A _date_ -date, you might even say."

"Then yes, Sam Wilson, I'd like to go on a _date_ -date with you tonight."

Google and Twitter helped Sam find a restaurant in DC that was still open and in a picturesque neighborhood. Maria drove a different car, a blue Subaru Forester, and they were relatively silent during the car ride.

Sam was wearing a button-front shirt and khakis, which weren't his ideal date clothes but the majority of his wardrobe was packed rather inaccessibly in tubs for moving. Maria had produced a black dress and a cardigan, both made out of some sort of material that refused to wrinkle, and she looked a lot better than he did.

The restaurant was just Italian food, but the pasta was made fresh, the bread was plentiful, and the company couldn't have been beat. By the end, Maria's shoulders didn't look so tight, and Sam could feel himself relaxing.

They were relaxed enough that Maria actually suggested a stroll around the neighborhood; the weather was nice, and Sam said yes. He held out his hand once they got past the restaurant foot traffic, and she took it, her fingers a little cold but strong in his. 

It was a little embarrassing that he was so distracted by the feel of her hand and the warm presence she had next to him that he was surprised when she leaned into him and whispered in his ear, "Someone's following us." 

Somehow he managed not to jerk away, although he did tense a little and very much hoped it was concealed by the twilight. "What are we gonna do?"

She stopped, turned to him with a bright smile, and pulled him in to press her cheek to his. "I have a gun in my purse and a knife in my garter. We'll be okay; we'll just stick to the occupied areas and head back to the car," she murmured in his ear.

"Okay," he breathed, and stole a quick kiss -- a real kiss, but a fast one -- as he straightened and pulled away.

Maria gave him an amused grin as they started walking again.

Sam never did see the person following them, but Maria breathed a sigh of relief when they got back to the car. "They're gone," she said. "He's gone. Male, white or white-passing, thirtyish, around six feet tall, dark hair, was wearing a black leather jacket and black pants. Couldn't see his face and he had on sunglasses. Probably the same man who was following us in a car the other day."

"He left us something, though," Sam said, looking past Maria to the windshield, where there was a piece of paper stuck under the wiper.

Maria flattened herself against the car, back to the door, and put her hand in her purse, clearly holding the gun. Sam dropped into a more defensive pose without thinking, and then stretched out to grab the paper off the windshield.

"Can I open it?" he asked, and Maria nodded, scanning the street around them. It was a standard piece of printer paper, folded into quarters, and Sam unfolded it carefully.

On the paper was two names, _Samuel Thomas Wilson_ and _Maria Louisa Hill_ , rendered in accurate if shaky versions of their handwriting. Below that, in a much more confident hand, was _James Buchanan Barnes_.

Sam started unbuttoning his own shirt to compare the signature to his mark, although it looked the same at first glance, and Maria stopped him. "It's him," she said. "He's been following us."

"Well, at least we know who it is now," he said.

"Yeah," she said, and turned to unlock the car. "Let's go."

"What do you think we should do about it?" Sam said, once they were in the car and moving.

"I don't know," Maria said, her tone a little sharp. "I don't like not knowing," she added, a little softer.

"I know," Sam said, as gently as he could. "He wants us to know he's following him. Do we wait until he does it again and then turn around and call his bluff?"

"We could," Maria said. "Seems risky."

"Or we wait for him to make actual contact."

"Also risky."

"Do we tell Stark? Since we're going to be living under his roof shortly."

"Again, risky," she said, but chuckled a little bitterly at the end. "Everything's a risk."

"Love is always a risk," Sam said.

Maria braked a little too hard at the red light and turned to him. "No. You and me, that's -- that could be love, you know, someday. Someday soon. And we're a risk, insofar as we both work in a risky profession, but loving you isn't the risk. The minute we touched, the minute we soulmated, the risk was complete. And the risk with Barnes is not that we'll love him, it's that he'll _kill_ us before we can even find out if there's someone there to love." She sighed and touched the accelerator gently. "That was garbled, but I think you get the drift."

"Yeah," he said. "Sorry. That was flippant anyway."

"I don't think we tell Stark yet," she said. "I think the plan is, essentially, don't be alone and don't go unarmed until we determine exactly what's going on. But I also don't think we need to initiate contact. I think he'll come to us, and I think when he does so, he probably won't try to kill us. If we go to him, if we try to call his bluff, he may kill us."

"Yeah," Sam said. "Agreed."

"You have a gun, right?"

He snorted.

"Stupid question, I know. Do you need a knife?"

"I have a hunting knife and a folding knife," he said. "I'll be a little better about keeping them on me."

Maria nodded; the streetlights and headlights flashed a bar across her eyes and cheekbones that disappeared a moment later. Even though they were talking about a stalker and murder and self-defense, Sam had a moment of wonder at how beautiful she was, how strong and resilient and smart, and how lucky he was that he'd gotten her as a soulmate.

Sam wasn't especially sure how he felt about God these days. He'd grown up with preachers in the family and hours spent on a hard pew in church on Sunday, singing and clapping and believing, but despite the old adage about no atheists in a foxhole, he'd seen a lot, and he'd changed. Even so, assuming he could scrape up enough faith to do so, he wholeheartedly believed that God had blessed him with Maria as a soulmate.

And if that were true, Bucky must be a blessing as well.

 _Or a trial_ , some portion of his brain reminded him.

 _God never gives you more than you can handle_ , came his mama's voice, and he smiled a little.

"What?" Maria said.

"Hm?"

"You made a sound," she said. They were close to the apartment building, and Maria went in the back way as she'd been doing.

"Nothing," Sam said. "Just reminding myself that I'm pretty lucky."

"Only one mass murderer as a soulmate?" Maria said, but she was looking at him out of the corner of her eye and the smile on her face was genuine.

"Something like that," he said.

When they got inside, the lights were out and the door to Natasha and Steve's bedroom was open; no one was home. There was a note on the fridge, though, and it said, _Gone. Back tomorrow._ in Steve's uneven print (why the supersoldier had the messiest handwriting of the four of them, he'd never know, but he digressed).

Maria read the note and laughed. "Well, that's one way to do it."

"Do what?" Sam asked.

"I'm ninety-nine percent sure that Natasha dragged Steve off to a more secure location to jump his bones," she said.

"Oh," he said. "Good." He meant it, too: honestly, Steve and Natasha had their shit less sorted out than Sam did with Maria, and hopefully this meant they'd gotten somewhere.

"Yeah," Maria said. She sounded a little distracted, but he didn't have time to consider why before she said, "I know we haven't had the entire sex conversation yet but on a scale of one to ten, one being 'never' and ten being 'why didn't you ask yesterday,' how would you feel about me ordering you to get onto your knees and eat me out?"

"Ten," Sam said immediately. He almost dropped to his knees right then and there, but they were still negotiating. "Just that?"

"You can jerk yourself off while you're doing it. You can even come."

"And then, both of us, in the bed, sleeping?"

"Couch, cuddling, trading watches," she countered.

"Okay," he said. "You want me to strip?"

"Well, if you're offering," Maria said. She stepped out of her shoes, picked them up by the heels, and headed for the bedroom. "Are you coming?" she said, looking over her shoulder.

"Yes, ma'am," he said, and followed her.

\--

The move to Stark Tower was relatively simple; all they took were personal belongings, of which Steve and Natasha had almost none. Maria only had maybe two bags' worth, and Sam felt like a hoarder with his storage tubs. The truck that Pepper had sent was more than big enough to contain it all five times over, though, so it worked.

Someone named Jarvis directed the four of them via intercom to the sixty-third floor, where there were two apartments side by side that required a complicated combination of biometrics and passcodes to get in. But before they could even finish setting all that up, the elevator opened again and there was Tony Stark himself.

"Steve! Natasha! Maria! Guy I haven't met yet!" he said.

"Hello, Stark," Natasha said with a sigh.

"Stark," Maria said.

"Tony," Steve said.

"Sam Wilson," Sam said.

"Yeah," Tony said. "Thought so. EXO-7 wasn't my baby but I was brought in to consult, and I recognized the wings right away off the news footage. Your friends seem super excited to see me," he said conversationally, still directly to Sam.

"Well, people have been trying to kill us," Sam said, "and this billionaire wants us to give him a DNA sample before we can get into the apartments, and that might be a little invasive."

"Eh, what's a little privacy invasion between friends? J, let 'em in for now."

"As you wish, sir," Jarvis said, and the doors opened.

"You got a guy in a room just talking on an intercom all day?" Sam asked Tony as he followed Maria into their apartment, Stark trailing after him.

"A what?" Tony said. "Oh, hey, no, JARVIS is an AI, not a guy in a room on an intercom."

"Oh," Sam said. He probably should have expected that.

"So JARVIS can make educated guesses about security features, yada yada," Tony said. "Kitchen, three bedrooms, take your pick which ones -- or one, singular -- you want. Dining room attached, and a guest bath here, plus one attached to each of the bedrooms. Living room over there, but there's kind of a communal area on the sixty-fifth floor. Penthouse is on sixty-six, because I like the symbolism. Some floors you aren't allowed on, mostly because of safety reasons, but ask JARVIS and he'll get you where you need to go."

"What glass is in the windows?" Maria said, coming out of the bedroom in the corner. "That one," she said in an aside to Sam.

Sam nodded and picked up his bags as Tony answered her. "It's my own design..."

The bedroom had a bank of windows on one side, and the bed on the opposite wall, facing them. "Well, that'll be an early wake-up," Sam said to himself.

"If you'll permit me, Sergeant Wilson, I can show you all the options for dimming and opaquing the glass," JARVIS said.

"Oh, um, maybe later," Sam said. "But thanks."

"You are welcome, Sergeant Wilson."

The bed in the middle was larger than king size, which was probably why Maria chose that room, and the bathroom, once Sam poked his head in, turned out to have a four-person Jacuzzi tub in addition to a double-sized shower stall.

It was nice, if very impersonal, and Sam was okay with that.

He returned to the living room, and came back into the conversation as Tony said, "And Pepper's in California until tomorrow evening, but you're welcome to come up and have dinner with us tonight."

"Us?"

"Oh, Bruce has been staying in the tower. Didn't you know that?"

"Kinda been busy lately, Stark," Maria said with a grin.

"Yes, I can see that," Tony said, and raised one eyebrow in Sam's direction. "Well, and also SHIELD turning out to be HYDRA and all."

"And all," Maria said.

"Well, I won't keep you," Tony said. "Dinner, 7, probably sushi or Thai or something. JARVIS can remind you if you want."

"Sure," Maria said, and Tony left with a half-assed salute.

\--

After unpacking, and dinner, where Sam met the Hulk, who also happened to be a brilliant nuclear physicist who appeared to have a near-supernatural tolerance for Tony Stark's energy levels, Maria suggested christening the new place. "I have it under good authority that we're soundproofed here," she said.

"Well, in that case," Sam said.

She took him apart with her hands and mouth and rebuilt him the same way, piece by piece, and afterwards he lay on the bed, spread-eagled, his own come drying on his stomach and Maria's on his face. "Oh, my God," he said, his voice little more than a harsh breath and his mind hazy and white.

Maria chuckled gently and continued rubbing his face, her fingers a gentle pressure behind his ears that made even his wrung-out body and overloaded nervous system manage a shiver.

One he'd returned to himself, enough to be just tired and not out of it as well, Maria kissed him and said, "I'm going to take a shower, if that's okay."

"Yeah, that's fine," Sam said. "Throw me a washcloth or something before you start?"

"I'll even wet it down," she said, grinning. A moment later she brought a warm wet washcloth out to him and started wiping him off. She wasn't trying to be sexy, he didn't think, but when she was done he pulled her down for another kiss.

She broke it off way too early, in his estimation, and said, "Nuh-uh. I'm showering now."

"Oh, all right," Sam said, grumbling, and let her go. He watched her head for the bathroom with a little extra wiggle in her step and thought, _Damn,_ not for the first time.

He lay back on the bed and tucked his hands under his head, staring up at the ceiling. He could feel the giant grin on his face and he really didn't care. "Hey, JARVIS, can you put on some music?"

"What music would you prefer, sir?"

"Sam," Sam said. "And how about some Stevie Wonder? Songs in the Key of Life, side four."

The music started, and Sam let his eyes drift shut.

"Sir."

"It's Sam, JARVIS," he said. "I thought we'd been over that."

"Sergeant Wilson, then. You --"

"Better," Sam said, "but not quite right."

" _Sam_ ," the AI said, clearly exasperated. "You have a . . . caller, I suppose."

"A what?"

"An individual of questionable virtue wishes your attention. He is at the window in the living room."

"The window?" Sam jumped out of bed and threw on his jeans, heedless of things like shirts and underwear, and grabbed his gun out of the bedside drawer. "How much of a threat is he?" he asked as he put his back against the wall and peered out the door.

"I cannot be certain about every single weapon, but he appears to have at least three guns, five knives, and, of course, the metal arm."

"Oh," Sam said, and pointed the gun down at the floor. "It's Barnes."

"I believe so, sergeant."

Sam dismissed the name fight as pointless and took a deep breath. "Okay," he said, mostly to himself, and stepped around the corner into the living room.

Barnes was standing on the window ledge, metal hand holding onto a line attached somewhere out of view, right hand splayed against the glass. Neither was, clearly, holding a gun. Sam didn't put his down, but he did say, "JARVIS, does the window open?"

"It does, sergeant, but --"

"I've got a gun," Sam said bluntly. "Also, he's my soulmate. It's gonna give me a few seconds. Also, you can tell Maria if you think I'm actually in danger." Maria wasn't going to be happy with him at all, but he couldn't exactly wait.

A panel slid sideways and by the time it was less than a foot open, Barnes had let himself in. "Samuel Thomas Wilson," he said.

"James Buchanan Barnes," Sam said. The window slid shut, leaving the line dangling outside.

"Maria Louisa Hill is still in the shower?" Barnes asked.

"Yeah," Sam said. "Usually I'm just Sam, and she's Maria."

Barnes nodded. "I don't -- they used to call me Bucky," he said. "I remember it, but it's like it happened to someone else."

"What do you want me to call you?" Sam asked.

"Bucky's as good as anything," he said with a shrug. He was wearing a black hoodie and black jeans with combat boots, although they were more like regular combat boots than the ones he'd been wearing before. He still wore the fingerless gloves and he had about a week's worth of scruff on his face, give or take a couple days.

"Well, if you change your mind," Sam said, "keep me posted. You gonna kill me?"

"No," Bucky said, but he didn't sound that certain. "Probably not," he amended.

"That's fair," Sam said.

"WHAT?"

Both men turned towards the bedroom door, and there was a loud slamming noise -- two of them -- and then Maria appeared, a gun pointed straight at Bucky, a towel wrapped around her but sliding off of her breasts. "You let him _in_?" she said, clearly to Sam although she didn't take her eyes off of Bucky.

"Well, yeah," Sam said, a little distracted as the towel finally gave up the ghost and fell to the floor.

"I won't kill you either," Bucky said to her. "Well, probably not. Can't guarantee what I'll do if you wake me up out of a sound sleep." He made a face that was probably trying to be a smile, and Sam --

\-- Sam wanted to touch him. A _lot_. Stupid soulbond compulsion. Instead, he closed the couple of steps between himself and Maria and leaned down to pick up the towel, wrapping it around her and tucking the end in under her arm.

Bucky stood there, his hands a little apart from his sides, not making a move to any of the weapons he had, and eventually, a good minute and a half later, Maria lowered her gun. She didn't take her finger off the trigger, though, and still had it pointed somewhere near Bucky's feet.

"Look," Sam said, once he thought Maria wouldn't accidentally shoot him. "How 'bout I go get you some clothes, and then hold your gun while you put them on, and then we sit down and have a conversation like adults?"

"All right," Maria said.

Sam disappeared into the bedroom, grabbed a t-shirt and pajama pants, not bothering with anything like underwear or socks, and brought them into the living room. Neither Bucky nor Maria had moved so much as an inch while he was gone, but he'd been expecting that. He took Maria's gun from her gently and held out the pajamas, and she slipped them on, dropping the towel unselfconsciously. 

After handing her the gun back, Sam went to sit on one end of the couch, gesturing to Bucky to take the overstuffed chair across from them. He did, gingerly, hands on the armrests, and then he stood again, carefully, and pulled a knife out from the length of his spine, as well as four separate guns and five other, smaller knives. "That's not everything," he said, "but it's as close as you're going to get."

"Good enough," Maria said. She was still holding the gun, although the safety was on and it wasn't pointed at anyone.

"So we're all soulmates," Sam said.

"Yeah," Bucky said. "Guess I saw your soulmarks; do you want to see mine?"

"You're here, aren't you?" Sam said, shrugging. "You can strip later."

Bucky nodded.

"Why were you following us?" Maria asked. She was sitting very square on her end of the couch; it looked very uncomfortable, but Sam was sure he couldn't force her to relax.

"You're my soulmates," Bucky said with a shrug. "You -- when you punched me, it -- I dunno if it jarred somethin' loose or what, but I remembered stuff. I remembered why it was important that your names were written on me." A faint accent, Brooklyn if Sam knew anything about Bucky Barnes, threaded in and out of his words. "I mean, I recognized Steve too, and that probably didn't hurt. But -- well, you're the good guys, aren't you?"

"Yes," Sam said, and Maria quirked an eyebrow but said nothing.

"Well, then, I'm pretty sure I was working for the bad guys, and I remembered some stuff about them. So if you want to know it, don't kill me." He turned his hands upside down on his knees, the metal one faintly reflecting the dim overhead light.

"We aren't going to kill you," Sam said. "But we probably need some people to check you over. We're not credible witnesses." He didn't think there was any way that Tony Stark would accept Sam and Maria's word that Bucky wasn't a threat to them, or Stark himself, or anyone else in the tower, even though JARVIS was undoubtedly recording this whole conversation.

"Yeah, I figured," Bucky said. "So I brought this." He pulled a USB drive out of the pocket of his hoodie and offered it to Sam, who took it. "It's everything I got off the computer in the place where they -- where they had me, before I torched it."

"Ah," Sam said.

"You mean the bank down in Georgetown?" Maria asked.

"Yeah, that one," Bucky said. "It had to go." His face went cold and stony, and Sam closed his fingers tightly around the USB drive.

Bucky noticed the motion, and said, "Take that to Stark. This is his building, isn't it? I'll wait here, or I'll come with you, whatever works."

"If I may, sergeant," JARVIS said, and Bucky jumped about a foot in the air. All of a sudden there was a knife in his hand; Sam had no idea where the knife came from, but there it was, about five inches long and wickedly sharp.

"Who the _fuck_ is that?"

"JARVIS," Sam said, and hesitated, because he wasn't sure how to introduce the AI just yet. "He, ah, takes care of security, among other things."

"Is he listening? Watching us?" Bucky's head turned as his gaze flicked from corner to corner of the room, lighting on a camera in one corner and a discreet set of speakers by the window.

"Yes, but he keeps all the secrets. Don't worry about him right now," Maria said.

Bucky nodded, but he kept the knife in his hand, and Maria didn't ask him to set it down.

"In any case, sergeant --"

"Don't call me that," Bucky said, his fingers flexing on the handle of the knife. His shoulders were somewhere around his ears, and Sam had no idea if he was going to run or fight or what.

"Excuse me, Mr. Barnes, but I was addressing Sergeant Wilson."

"Technical Sergeant," Sam said, and Bucky nodded. He relaxed a hair, but no more.

"In any case, _Sam_ ," JARVIS said, "there is a USB port on the screen on the wall to your left. If you insert the USB drive there, I shall direct the contents to a proper location."

"What if there's a virus?" Maria asked. She had her hand around the handle of the gun again, had since Bucky got out the knife.

"Agent Hill," JARVIS said, plainly affronted. "I should have thought you knew me better than that."

"Okay, true," Maria said, sighing. "I'm sorry, JARVIS." She gestured at Sam to go put the USB drive into the port, and he did so, turning his back on Bucky without even a second thought.

"Your apology is accepted, Agent Hill."

About thirty seconds passed, and JARVIS said, "Based on my calculations, Mr. Barnes is not any kind of mechanical threat to anyone here."

"What?" Bucky said.

"I think he means your arm isn't going to blow up," Maria said.

"That is true, Agent Hill, and Mr. Barnes is not fitted with a tracker of any sort."

"I was," Bucky said, oddly cheerful. "Dug it out." He patted his upper arm -- the flesh one -- with his left hand, relaxing a titch more.

"Let me see," Sam said, because medic training meant he couldn't not.

"It's fine," Bucky said, but he stripped off his hoodie to reveal a plain black t-shirt underneath. He pushed up the sleeve a little to reveal a short incision that had already scarred over. "I heal fast. Not as fast as Steve, but, you know, fast."

"Yeah," Sam said.

"While we're at it," Bucky said, and crossed his arms in front of him to strip off the t-shirt, revealing a very nice chest -- why was everyone in this building more built than Sam was? He wasn't exactly scrawny -- and, yes, Sam's name just below his collarbone and Maria's about three inches below it.

Possibly more interesting was the obviously-traumatic scarring around the left shoulder, leading into the metal arm itself, but Sam was smart enough not to stare or comment.

Bucky pulled his shirt and hoodie back on, and then looked expectantly at Maria. "So what's the English guy gonna do, now that he's said I'm not a threat? Go find Stark?"

"Oh, JARVIS is an AI," she said.

"Oh," he said. "Did he get the flying car to work, too?"

"We're in Stark Junior's tower," she said gently. "Stark Senior -- Howard; his son is Tony -- passed away twenty-some years ago."

"Oh," Bucky said. "Yeah, that makes sense. Wait -- did -- was Howard in a car crash?"

"Possibly," Maria said, poker face on. "Why?"

"Think I mighta shot out the tires on a sports car that someone was stupidly driving on icy roads," he said, his face twisting. "Is Stark Junior going to be okay with me being here?"

"You shall find out shortly," JARVIS said, "as Master Stark has invited himself to your floor."

"Oh," Sam said. "In that case, I might put a shirt on."

"I'm going to put a bra on," Maria said, "and maybe underwear."

They took turns quickly running into the bedroom, and made it out before Tony knocked on the door and came in without waiting for a response. "The fuck did they do to you, buddy?" he said directly to Bucky, who went blank-faced and stiff. "Sorry, hi, Tony Stark. I own the building you are sitting in. Thanks for the data; JARVIS is still going through it but holy shit they did some fucked-up shit to you."

"Stark, dude, don't take this the wrong way, but shut the hell up," Sam said.

"Hey, Tony," Maria said, "you wanna tell us all the intimate details about what happened to you in Afghanistan?" She'd gotten out her phone and was texting someone, but Sam couldn't see who.

Tony jerked like he'd been shot. "Yeah, okay, good point. Hi, you're Bucky Barnes, or were at some point called that. You knew my dad. I'm a mechanic, among other things."

There was a knock at the door before Bucky replied, and then it opened, again without the knocker waiting for a response. "Tony, what on earth --" Steve said, and then stopped, plainly flabbergasted. "Bucky?"

"Steve," Bucky said. "I --"

"Would everyone sit down and be quiet?" Maria said, not loudly, but with enough vehemence in her voice that everyone did just that. "I'm sorry I had to call Steve in," she said to Bucky. "I wasn't going to do that yet. If you wanted to see him, you would have gone straight to him, I know. But I needed reinforcements to deal with Stark."

Bucky nodded. Steve's jaw tightened a little, but he said nothing.

"Excuse me," Tony said. "One, I'm actually here to help. Two, this is my building and I get some say about who's allowed into it --"

"Stark, Maria, can I talk to you in the hallway for a second?" Steve said, his Captain America face and voice out in full force.

Maria looked at Sam, who nodded, and then, with Steve's help, frog-marched Stark into the hall. The door shut behind them, and with the soundproofing, Sam couldn't hear any of the discussion.

He did know a way around that, though. "JARVIS, do you think they're saying anything in the hallway that we need to hear?"

"It appears to be a very loud agreement, sirs," JARVIS said. "Captain Rogers is attempting to convince Sir that Mr. Barnes is not a threat, or at least a manageable one. Sir is attempting to convince Captain Rogers that Mr. Barnes is in need of his specialized expertise, and therefore should stay here. And Agent Hill has remained largely silent." JARVIS said nothing for a beat. "Indeed, Sir is discussing the information on the USB drive that Mr. Barnes brought with him. Captain Rogers appears to have blanched."

"There's some rough stuff on there," Bucky said, his voice scratchy. He'd started flipping the knife into the air, end over end, always catching it by the handle, and Sam watched the blade flash. It seemed to be a kind of nervous habit, but it was soothing Bucky somewhat, so Sam didn't stop him.

"Has Maria said anything yet?" Sam asked, after about a minute of dead air.

"She is agreeing with the gentlemen and -- ah, they are discussing security concerns. You will understand if I do not relay them to you."

"No problem, JARVIS," Sam said.

The three re-appeared a moment later; Steve was a little red in the face, but he stopped just inside the door. "We've agreed that it's best if, ah, Bucky stays here," he said. "If that's what you want."

Bucky shrugged. "For now, I guess."

"Okay," Steve said. "I'm gonna -- I'm right next door, okay? You come find me when you want to see me."

"Yeah," Bucky said, and Steve nodded and left, shutting the door gently behind him.

"Can I see it?" Tony said. He was eyeing Bucky's arm.

"Excuse you, Stark," Maria said.

"C'mon, just two more minutes, and then I'll go away," Tony said. "Please? JARVIS says your elbow is gummed up, and I can fix that."

Bucky stripped his shirts off again, both at once.

Sam went to stand behind him, not really sure why, and watched as Tony ran gentle fingers over the plates. "Hel-lo, beautiful," he cooed.

"Stark," Maria said, and Sam watched her fingers twitch like she was holding herself back from putting one on the trigger of the gun she wasn't even holding.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, he's your soulmate, both of you, in some kinky sort of triangle thing, whatever," Tony said. "But this? This is a work of art, and I'll have you know there are only, like, a couple dozen people in the world who can appreciate it properly. Ah, here's the problem. Is that seaweed?"

"Is it called seaweed if it grows in a river?" Bucky asked.

"He speaks!" Tony said, and pulled a screwdriver set and a bottle of oil out of the pockets of his jeans. "Hold still."

"I could kill you about a dozen different ways right here and now," Bucky said as Tony poked between a couple of plates.

"Yeah, and I could kill you, too," Tony said around the screwdriver that had inevitably ended up in his mouth. He spat it into his hand and waved. "Hello, Iron Man. Wait, maybe you don't know that. So, I'm a superhero, too, yada yada yada, saved New York with your old buddy next door."

"And then exploded all your suits," Maria said.

"Doesn't make me not Iron Man," Tony said flippantly. "Also I built a couple new ones, obviously. Anyway, this should work better now." He stood up and brushed a hand over Bucky's arm again.

"Stark," Sam said, his voice a warning.

"Wilson," Tony said, mimicking him, "I'm already bonded, Maria and I have already touched, there's no way I'm accidentally getting in on your little triangle orgy thing here. Which, now that he can actually use that arm, you're welcome. So I'm leaving, have fun, don't tell me what surfaces you've christened, and JARVIS can tell you the number for the cleaning service. See ya."

Tony left, and Sam just stared at the door for a moment.

"If it makes you feel any better, I couldn't feel most of what he did," Bucky said. "I'm not sure why you were upset, though."

"He was treating you like a thing," Sam said, and went to sit back by Maria, brushing a hand over her knee as he did so.

"He's not the first, and I'm sure he won't be the last," Bucky said with a shrug.

Sam decided to let the subject drop on account of his blood pressure.

"So how is this going to work?" Maria said.

"I guess I'm gonna stick around for a while," Bucky said. "How do you and Sam work?"

Sam and Maria exchanged a look. "It's . . . a little different," she said.

"You mean the way you're always topping him?" Bucky said.

"Were you watching us?" Sam asked, his stomach twisting.

"A little," Bucky said with a shrug.

"Is that your thing, watching?" she asked.

"No," Bucky said. "Well, I don't really -- " He looked out the window to his left for a moment. "I don't actually remember, and I haven't -- not since the late '80s or early '90s, I think. I don't know if --"

"We're getting ahead of ourselves," Sam said, interrupting him gently, and boy, did he feel stupid for letting the conversation get sidetracked like that. "You're not a threat, we know that. How _are_ you? Cold? Tired? Hungry? Sick? Scared?"

"Not real sure about most of that, either," Bucky said. "Not cold, no. I don't sleep much and I can't remember the last time I ate, so I probably need food. Not sick neither; I don't think I get sick anymore."

But, Sam thought to himself with a sinking feeling, all of that was intellectual. Bucky didn't mention that he _felt_ anything except _not cold_. "And scared?" he said gently.

"I don't know," Bucky said after a minute.

"You don't have to know," Sam said. "Can I touch you?"

"You're my soulmate," Bucky said, frowning. "Of course you can."

"I'm not gonna presume," Sam said. He stood, crossed the short distance between them, knelt, and wrapped his fingers around Bucky's -- both hands, metal and flesh.

"Oh," Bucky said, after a pause, and then his eyes were brimming with tears. He stood abruptly, pulling his hands out of Sam's, and said, "I have to go. I'll be back, I promise. JARVIS, the window?"

The window slid open about a foot and Bucky slithered out, caught the line still dangling, and disappeared downward.

"Well," Maria said, over the soft 'clink' of the glass closing. "What the hell just happened there?"

"I don't know," Sam said. "I do think he'll be back, though."

"Well, he left all his weapons," she said, gesturing at the table, covered in guns and knives. She stood, went to the bedroom, and returned with an empty box. The knives went in first; with the guns, she ejected the cartridges and put them in the box separately. "They're in good condition," she said. "He's got a safehouse, or bolthole or something, where he's been cleaning them."

"He's also showered in the last couple of days," Sam said, watching her. "He's . . . in less trouble than he could be."

"Yeah," Maria said, closing the flaps on the box and setting it aside. "He'd better come back, though."

"Yeah," Sam said. "Among other things, Steve's gonna be pissed if he doesn't."

Maria cracked a smile at that. She sat on the couch, held her arms out, and said, "Come here."

Sam did, and through unspoken agreement, they stretched out on the couch, pulled a blanket over them, and waited.

Sort of. Sam fell asleep almost immediately, and he assumed Maria did too, because the next thing he knew, she was pushing herself up to a sitting position next to him and saying, harshly, "How long have you been here?"

"About five hours," Bucky said.

Sam sat up, too, disentangling himself from Maria and the blanket. It was somewhat after dawn; Sam would guess around six-thirty or seven. Bucky was sitting in the chair he'd had before, a sniper rifle across his knees, dressed as he had been before. There was a giant black duffel bag next to him, and he was clearly on high alert. "You keeping watch?" Sam asked.

"Yes," Bucky said. "You were asleep, and someone has to keep watch."

"We have JARVIS for that," Sam said.

"But --" Bucky stopped, and tilted his head a little in Maria's direction. "This is something I can do. You take care of Sam, Sam takes care of me, I keep watch for both of you."

"Oh," Sam said.

"You know what you can do for us," Maria said, her words measured and even. "You can talk to a friend of ours, a therapist, and we can make a plan for you to -- for you not to be the Winter Soldier anymore."

"You want me to be Bucky Barnes again," Bucky said, and all the expression, what little there had been, drained out of his face. "Like I was before all of this."

"No," Sam said as quickly as he could. "No, we don't want you to be anyone other than who you are. But we don't think you quite know who you are right now."

"What do I --" Bucky stopped and tried again. "How do I figure that out?"

"That's what therapists can do," Sam said. "I should know. I am one, but I'm not gonna be _your_ therapist because I'm your soulmate."

"Okay," Bucky said. "When do I start?"

\--

It wasn't that easy.

First, Pepper helped them figure out some sort of resolution to the legal snarl that was Bucky's mere existence. Her task was helped by the fact that the Winter Soldier in no way legally existed outside of cryptic references in the SHIELD databases. She managed not only to get him a state ID and bank account with his real name (and a false birthdate), but got Tony to make sure that any evidence that James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes might be the Winter Soldier so obfuscated by alternate theories and accusations of quackery that anyone looking for real evidence would likely give up and quit.

Next, they had to find a therapist that would be cleared to know at least some of Bucky's actual history, and one that had preferably worked with deprogramming brainwashing victims as well as working with victims of torture. Fortunately, SHIELD had a list of those people, and with Natasha, Maria, and Fury looking into them to see if they were HYDRA or not, they quickly narrowed the list to three people. Bucky flat-out hated one of them and wouldn't explain why and had a lukewarm reaction to the second, but the third -- a woman named Dr. Nikhila Chaudhri, with a background in helping brainwashing and rape victims -- struck some sort of chord in him, and he agreed to see her regularly.

"Does she remind you of someone?" Maria asked once.

"I don't know. Maybe?" he said, and frowned. After the first few weeks he'd started having more facial reactions to things, and Sam really hoped it was because they were natural rather than just what they were expecting. "Someone in a red dress?"

Sam shrugged, and so did Maria, but he asked Steve about it later.

"Peggy," Steve said. "Peggy Carter. Does Dr. Chaudhri have an English accent?"

"Ha," Sam said, because she indeed did.

Dr. Chaudhri assigned Bucky homework, such as spending six hours each night in bed with the lights off, and he did it assiduously even when it caused him more harm than good. Once he spent the entire night and following day hiding in the closet in his bedroom, after a particularly disastrous conversation with Steve about their shared past, and Maria and Sam kept watch because they could do little else. 

It was difficult on some of the good days, but at least the therapy gave Bucky more words with which to describe what was going on with him. Sometimes he couldn't say the words, but they came up with hand gestures for when he was feeling particularly bad. There was one for "depersonalizing," when the anxiety and PTSD made him feel as if he were observing his own body; another one for "oversensitivity," when every sense was turned up to eleven and he just wanted to hide. There was one for "flashback," but he could only use that after the fact, and he almost always slid from a flashback into depersonalization or oversensitivity; there were ones for "anxiety" and "depression"; and there was one for "just generally crummy," which usually prompted Sam to put on kitten videos and order pizza for dinner.

There were a few terrible instances when Bucky dissociated back into something like the Winter Soldier, the blank slate, but they were relatively few.

Bucky did spend time with people who weren't Sam and Maria; Steve, mostly, and Natasha some, but also Clint Barton, when he was around, and for some reason he thought Tony was hilarious, once Tony got over the metal arm. Tony pretended that Bucky wasn't there just for the amusement factor, and they seemed to get along fine.

Sam and Maria managed to get away to be just Sam-and-Maria occasionally; sometimes she would come meet him down at the VA, where he was substituting as a group leader and doing some administrative work in between his other duties.

"I talked with Dr. Chaudhri today, when I picked Bucky up from his appointment," Sam said during one such lunch date. "At Bucky's request. She seems to think he's doing remarkably well, given the nature of his, ah, 'psychic injuries.'" He made air quotes around the last two words, although he didn't think the phrase was incorrect.

"That's good," Maria said, raising her eyebrows. "Did she had any theories on why?"

"On the physical side, his brain is regenerating and healing in ways that it shouldn't, and she thinks that might be part of it. Also she says he is extraordinarily motivated."

"Motivated?" she said.

"Yeah," he said. "He wants to get better, and she isn't sure if it's because he's got a pretty good support network or us -- his soulmates -- in specific, but whatever it is, it's doing him a lot of good."

"Good," she said. "I guess we should just keep up the good work."

"Yeah."

"I feel bad about it occasionally," Sam said after a pause. "I feel like I should have a more active role in his recovery, because it's my day job. I work with wounded and traumatized vets for a _living_."

"Sam, no," Maria said, reaching out for his hand. "You -- this is your personal life. You're there for him, and that's what you need to do."

"I know," he said, "but I can't turn off that part of my brain."

"Maybe you should talk to someone, too," she said.

Sam raised his eyebrows at her, and she flushed and looked away. "Yeah, I know," she said. "Fine words coming from me. It's . . . it's not how I was raised, you know, and nothing after that convinced me that any good has come of talking about my feelings. Until you." She took a deep breath. "I'm trying."

"I know," Sam said. "I know."

\--

Sam still accompanied Steve and various other people off on the occasional mission; when he did, he'd make sure that Maria didn't have to travel for her job as head of security for Stark Industries in New York and he'd tell Bucky exactly how long he was going to be gone and when he'd get back.

After one fairly routine mission (observation and a little bit of blowing things up), Sam, Steve, and Natasha got back to Stark Tower just before dinnertime. "Clean up, and then find food together?" Steve said, when they were just about to go into their respective apartments.

"Sure," Sam said. "I'll confirm once I've seen Maria and Bucky. Communal floor?"

"Yes," Natasha said. "I could do with waffles."

"Oooh," Sam said. "See you in, I don't know, an hour?"

"Okay."

Bucky was standing about five feet inside the door when Sam opened it. "Are you injured?" he asked. His affect was a little blank, but it usually was when Sam or Maria had been gone for a while.

"I'm fine," Sam said, but then, because honesty was a two-way street, added, "Well, no, my back's a little bit sore because I landed a little hard a few times, but I'll be fine after a couple nights in my own bed."

Bucky nodded. "You should take a shower."

"You tellin' me I smell?" Sam grinned, to make sure Bucky knew it was a joke, and Bucky shook his head a little.

"Also, it'll help your back," he said. "Do you need anything else? Are you hungry?"

"Dinner in about an hour, up on the communal floor, if you're okay with that," Sam said.

"I'm okay with that," Bucky said, although his face didn't change and Sam wasn't a hundred percent sure he believed him, but he nodded anyway.

He trailed behind Sam as Sam stowed his pack in his room, grabbed underwear and a shirt, and went into the bathroom. "Do you want me to leave the door open?" Sam asked.

"You don't _have_ to," Bucky said after a moment of thought.

"Here, how 'bout I leave it cracked, like this," Sam said, and closed the door until there was about two inches between it and the jamb.

"That's fine," Bucky said.

Sam didn't hear him move, so he was probably still standing a couple feet away, but he'd be all right for a few minutes. Stripping out of his grubby clothing, he started the water and looked in the mirror as he waited the few seconds before it was hot enough. He looked pretty tired and he needed a shave, but the shower would probably fix everything else. Good.

When he got out of the shower, he heard voices in the bedroom; Maria was there, talking to Bucky. Sam dried himself off quickly and wrapped the towel around his waist before peeking out the crack in the door.

He didn't see them at first, because they were sitting on the floor, backs against the same wall as the door, down and to Sam's left. Opening the door a little more, he poked his head out and looked down at them.

"Hi," Maria said, and quirked an eyebrow at him. "We're keeping watch."

Bucky, sitting next to her, nodded, his face rather painfully earnest.

"Well, thanks," Sam said, smiling at them. He retreated back inside the bathroom, left the door cracked, and did a better job of drying himself off. He shaved, put on his shirt and underwear, and was brushing his teeth when he paused for a moment, staring at his reflection with its mouth full of toothpaste foam.

It felt _normal_. He had no idea what it said about him that his two soulmates waiting outside the bathroom while he showered in the safest building in New York, if not the world, seemed like a perfectly legitimate thing to do -- and not in a 'one of them is only barely not a brainwashed, traumatized assassin' sort of way. But really, he hardly thought it needed questioning. 

He finished brushing his teeth, hung up the towel, and went into the bedroom. "Thanks for looking out for me," he said to Maria and Bucky, who hadn't moved. 

Maria was still in her work suit, the heels sitting next to her hip, and Bucky was wearing his usual black hoodie and jeans, but their postures were similar, and the way they both relaxed a little when Sam thanked them, well, it really said a lot.

Sam held out a hand to Maria, who used it to lever herself up, and offered a hand to Bucky, who gave his fingers a light squeeze before standing on his own. "Now, food?" Bucky said.

"Hold up, I gotta finish getting dressed," Sam said.

"And I have to change," Maria said. "But then, yes."

"Okay," Bucky said. "I'll wait in the hallway."

He meant, _I'll keep watch from the hallway,_ and Sam smiled at him as he left.

\--

Some six months out, during a lull after Sam, Steve, and Fury got back from destroying a particularly-wretched HYDRA hideout, Bucky sat Sam and Maria down after dinner one evening and said, "Dr. Chaudhri says I need to talk to you about our relationship."

"Oh?" Maria said.

"What about it?" Sam said.

"Dr. Chaudhri asked me how you two would classify our relationship and I didn't know, so I said I'd ask you," Bucky said.

"Uh, soulmates?" Maria said, and Sam kicked her under the table. They'd agreed not to be flippant about any of this stuff, but sometimes she forgot and went on the defensive.

"That's what I said to her," Bucky said, "actually, but she said that wasn't enough, since all that meant was that we have words on each other and you give me hugs when I ask for one." That had been the homework lesson a couple months ago, and Sam had almost cried with relief the first time he'd gotten a good, full-body hug from Bucky that didn't make him feel like Bucky was uncomfortable with all that contact. "So. We're obviously not lovers, unless I've been missin' something major, but we are roommates, yes?" He gestured around the apartment, one corner of his mouth ticked up in some semblance of the old smirk that Sam recognized from pictures.

"We're definitely roommates," Sam said. Bucky slept, when he managed to do so, in the second bedroom; sometimes he crashed on the couch instead, but to Sam's knowledge he never fell asleep anywhere that wasn't their apartment. "Probably friends, too," he added.

"Are we platonic soulmates?" Bucky asked. His hand, the metal one, balled into a fist and then let go, the plates making a soft shirring noise as they moved against each other.

Sam and Maria exchanged a look. "Do you want us to be?" Sam said.

"No, hell no," Bucky said. "Have you seen yourselves?" He looked away, and his face blanked. "But I can understand if you'd prefer it that way."

Sam looked at Maria again, and she gave the tiniest of headshakes. "I don't think we ever wanted to take that off the table forever," Sam said, "but six months ago, when you first came to us, you were in no shape to think about the relationship turning romantic and/or sexual, let alone consenting to same."

"And now? Who judges whether I'm competent to consent?" Bucky looked a tad skeptical.

"That's a good question," Maria said.

"I think you do," Sam said. "I know what medications you take, I know that you don't drink because of drug interactions."

"Alcohol barely works on me, anyway," Bucky said with a shrug. "Probably the stupidest side effect."

"And I assume if Dr. Chaudhri didn't think you were competent to consent based on what they did to you, she wouldn't have had you bring this topic up at all."

"That is, if you trust I'm not lying, and she did tell me to talk about it with you," Bucky said.

"We gotta trust that you're not lying," Sam said. "This doesn't work otherwise." He indicated the three of them with one finger.

Bucky nodded. "Well, okay. This may be more than you wanted to know, but a couple months ago she asked about, well, my dick basically. Do I wake up with morning wood, do I get myself off, do I even want to think about sex, whatnot. And the answers were yes to morning wood but not really to masturbation." He shrugged, turning a little red over his cheekbones. "Didn't see the point, back then, at least."

"And now?" Maria asked.

"So I tried it," Bucky said, ignoring her, "and all I could think about was the two of you together. So I guess that means something."

"What were we doing together?" Sam asked. Maria's hand found his under the table and squeezed sharply, and he squeezed back.

"You forget, I've seen you before, and sometimes you forget to turn on the noise cancelling," Bucky said. He looked more than a little amused as he slouched in his chair, right arm hooked over the back. "So, yeah, you're on your back, sometimes grabbing the headboard," he said to Sam, "and you're riding him, or blowing him sometimes, or maybe using ice on him like you did that one time about six weeks ago."

It was Maria's turn to flush; Sam's face was a little hot, too, but it was at least half because he was working his way to being turned on. She coughed a little before saying, "So how do you see yourself fitting into this?"

"Well, I hoped we'd all be naked," Bucky drawled, and then abruptly sat up and leaned his forearms on the table. "Do you ever not do it that way? Is Sam ever on top?"

"Physically, sometimes," Maria said. "In terms of who's in control? No. I'm not interested in that from anyone." Her fingertips were digging into Sam's leg now, just above his knee.

"I can work with that," Bucky said. "I can follow orders real well."

Maria's lips twisted to one side. "Yes, but --"

"You know, it would be nice to have some orders to follow that would be _good_ ," Bucky said, interrupting her. "And Sam, it would be nice to have someone who trusted me to take care of them."

Sam sucked in a breath, because _yeah_ , he could definitely be into that.

"That works for me," Maria said. "I mean, at least, in theory. Sam?"

"Yeah," he said, and cleared his throat so he didn't sound quite so . . . lustful, he guessed, was the right word. "Yeah, that works for me too."

"Okay," Bucky said, and Sam could feel him jiggling one leg under the table. "So, um, date night Friday?"

"What's wrong with tonight?" Maria asked.

"Nothing, I just --" He stopped, and took a moment to look at Sam and Maria, and laughed. "The idea of me watchin' you, that's got both your motors revving, does it?"

"We're probably going to have sex regardless of whether you're there or not, yeah," Maria said. She looked at Sam, who nodded fervently. "So you can listen from your room, if you want. You can come in afterwards for the cuddling. You can watch from the chair, from the couch, from the other side of the bed, whatever. You can make out with us a little, or a lot, and then sit back and watch, while you get yourself off or not, your choice. Or we can go straight for home plate," she said. "It's up to you right now. What are you up for?"

"I, um," Bucky said, and closed his mouth with a click. "Huh. Wasn't expecting that."

"Obviously," Sam said, and reached his hand across the table, palm up.

Bucky put his hand into Sam's, the left one, a little tentatively, and then firmed up his grip as Maria reached her hand out, too. "Take your time," she said. "You can always change your mind at any point in the night, too."

Bucky nodded, his fingers tightening a little on both Sam's and Maria's. "I think," he said, "I might want to watch, mostly, this time? I don't know what's gonna happen. I mean," he said with a crooked grin, "I know how sex works. What I don't know is how I'm gonna react to the two of you touching me, on top of me, behind me, all that stuff." He looked down at their linked hands. "And I don't think tonight's really the night to go for broke and damn the consequences." He met Sam's eyes, and then Maria's. "So I'll watch, mostly, maybe from the chair. But maybe we could kiss some first?" He ducked his head so a lock of hair, one that had escaped his ponytail, fell over his face, and he looked adorably and incongruously boyish.

"Yes," Maria said. "Yes, we can." She stood, letting go of Bucky's hand and Sam's knee, and nudged Bucky's leg until she could stand between him and the table and then hitch herself up to sit on it. "Stand up," she said.

He did, shoving the chair back with a screech that they all ignored. With her seated and him standing, he was a good eight or nine inches taller than she was, and when she said, "Kiss me," he had to bend over quite a bit to comply.

Privately Sam applauded her for doing that, because Bucky seemed very comfortable sliding a hand -- his right -- along her cheek and tilting her face up to meet his. The kiss started out slow and gentle and a little tentative, but it was clear to Sam when muscle memory kicked in and Bucky dropped his jaw to run his tongue across Maria's lips.

She pulled back right away when he did that. "Ah, ah, ah," she said. "My speed. Try again."

Bucky's eyes widened a little, and he grinned before leaning back in and kissing her again.

This time it was obvious that he was letting Maria take the lead; at least, it was obvious to Sam, who was used to the way Maria kissed -- well, he had some idea, anyway. He didn't suppose he would ever get _used_ to something he liked that much. In any case, Bucky's right hand stayed carefully on Maria's shoulder, his left on her waist, and he gave exactly as much pressure as he got. When Maria finally opened her mouth and touched the tip of her tongue to Bucky's lips, Bucky whimpered, and then pulled away, panting.

"Is it always like that?" he asked Sam, although his eyes were still on Maria.

"Yeah," Sam said. "It is."

"Okay," Bucky said. "Okay. Can I kiss Sam?"

"Are you done kissing me?" Maria asked.

"Maybe for the moment?"

"Okay," Maria said, her face softening a little. "Kiss Sam."

Sam stood and sat on the edge of the table, too, and Bucky moved to stand in front of him. "You can kiss me however you want," Sam said. "I'm not that interested in topping a sundae, let alone a person."

"Bet you taste sweet enough to top _my_ sundae," Bucky said, startling Sam into a laugh, and they were both smiling when Bucky leaned forward to close the distance between them. 

He pulled back after no more than a few seconds of chaste kissing and rubbed his thumb over the edge of Sam's goatee. "Scratchy," he said. "I like it, don't get me wrong, but I don't know that I've ever kissed a man with a beard before."

"All clean-shaven?" Sam said. He thought about poking his tongue out to lick Bucky's thumb, but that might have been a step too far.

"Well, yeah, or there just wasn't a lot of kissing goin' on," Bucky said.

"Fair enough," Sam said. "Now are you gonna get back to kissing _me_ or not?"

"Thought you said you weren't toppy at all," Bucky said, grinning again, but he leaned back in and set his lips to Sam's again.

He kissed very differently from Maria, which Sam supposed he should have expected. The prickle of his five-o'clock shadow was the least of it, even. He was much more hesitant, even though he did know all the right moves, and even when he'd coaxed Sam into parting his lips, he kept his tongue light and towards the front of Sam's mouth.

The kiss was sexy, and sensual, but somehow comforting at the same time, and at the end of the kiss, Sam pulled Bucky against him gently. Bucky went easily and wrapped his arms around Sam for the hug, his chin against Sam's temple. "I want to make you happy," Bucky whispered, loud enough that Maria definitely heard as well.

"You already do," Sam said, and Bucky melted against him for a long moment. When he pulled away, Sam added, "What do you need to make _you_ happy?"

Bucky licked his lips, let his eyes rove up and down Sam's and Maria's forms, and said, "I'd be really happy to see both of you naked."

"He's said that twice now," Sam said to Maria. "You think he means it?"

"Oh, probably," Maria said. "Come on, boys." She turned on her heel and headed to the bedroom, stripping off her sweater as she walked.

Bucky wolf-whistled and followed her; Sam trailed behind, pushing the chairs under the table before he left the room. "JARVIS," he said, "you know what to do."

"Indeed, Mr. Wilson," JARVIS said, and fell silent. The noise cancelling made a weird non-hum in Sam's ears, but it would go away once he got inside the bedroom and closed the door.

Once he did make it inside the bedroom, he paused with his hand on the door. "Okay if I close the door?" he said to Bucky.

"Yeah," Bucky said. "Don't lock it."

"Never do," Sam said, and shut the door with a soft click. Maria was sitting on the edge of the bed and Bucky on the edge of the couch; Maria's legs were crossed and her toe was drawing circles in the air. "So you want us naked?" Sam said, to try to get things back on track.

"Well, only if you want to," Bucky said, and it wasn't clear if he was joking or not from his tone.

"We'll tell you if anything isn't okay, all right?" Sam said, and Bucky nodded. "Maria?"

"Shirt off, Sam," she said.

Sam pulled his shirt off in one easy movement and draped it over the chair.

"Now your jeans and socks but not your underwear."

He pulled out his belt first and coiled it neatly, setting it on the seat, before stripping off his jeans and pulling of his socks. His boxer briefs were just dark green, nothing special, but he wouldn't have guessed that from the look on Bucky's face. Maria looked appreciative, but Bucky looked _hungry_.

Maria held one finger up and rotated it around, and Sam obediently twirled in a circle. "Nice," she said, and Sam could see Bucky nodding out of the corner of his eye. "Come over here and help me undress."

He did; he took off her jewelry first, the necklace and coordinating earrings that went in their own boxes, and the watch that had its own box, too. Next he unbuttoned her shirt and slid it off her shoulders before unhooking her bra and sliding that off, too. Her pants didn't need a belt, but he folded them carefully and set them over the back of the chair, laying the shirt on top of them and the bra over that, and knelt in front of her, waiting to see if she wanted to lose her panties, too. "Oh, why not," she said, and he hooked his fingers in the elastic and drew them down her legs gently.

"You too," she said, after she was completely nude, and Sam dropped his drawers and set them aside.

They both turned to look at Bucky, and Bucky's eyes were wide and his lips parted at first. He recovered quickly, though, and smirked at them. "Told you you two were gorgeous," he said, giving them both pretty thorough once-overs.

"Anything else you want to see?" Maria asked.

"Hm?" he said.

"You said you wanted to see us naked," she said. "We're naked. I'm taking requests right now, but that's it."

Bucky thought about it for a minute, his face going blank and unreadable, but life came back into his expression when he said, "Can you -- when you go for gold, can you maybe angle it so I have a good view?"

"You're going to stay on the couch?" she asked.

"I think so," he said, "but I don't know."

"You can move over to the bed, or move farther away, at any time," Maria said. She sat down on the edge of the bed and motioned for Sam to do the same. "If you say stop, we'll stop everything and see what happened."

"Stop everything?" Bucky raised an eyebrow.

"Well, if Sam says 'argon,' we stop everything and talk about it, too, and if I say 'crockpot,' same thing. You get a word as well."

"But I'm not -- I'm not the one getting fucked," he said.

"Doesn't matter," Maria said. She crossed her arms and stared him down until he nodded.

"Okay. Stop means stop, I got it."

"Ask before you touch," she said. "We'll probably say yes, but we'd like a heads-up."

"Should I tell you before I move?"

"Unless you just flat-out need to leave, yes."

"Okay. Got it. Stop, ask before I touch, leave if I need to, otherwise announce where I'm moving to. Anything I just shouldn't do?"

Maria flicked her gaze over to Sam. "We don't do humiliation or pain in here."

" _Good_ ," Bucky said, and blinked a few times before he looked away. "Ask before you touch me too, okay?"

"Of course," Maria said, and Sam nodded. "Is there anything you don't think you'll be able to watch us do?"

"I can't think of anything off the top of my head," Bucky said. "What were you planning on doing?"

"Nothing complicated," Maria said. "Probably just teasing him for a little, then riding him until we both finish, and then holding him until he's back with us."

"Is he going to --" Bucky looked at Sam sharply. "Do you depersonalize when this happens?"

" _No_ ," Sam said. "No. It's a little like being drunk or high, but not like depersonalizing. We won't do that tonight, will we, Maria."

It wasn't a question, but she answered anyway. "No, we won't, but we'll talk about subspace later. That having been said, orgasms hit Sam a little hard, so it'll take him a couple minutes to be able to speak. Is that okay?"

"Yeah, okay, I remember _that_ ," Bucky said, a shadow of his smirk back. "Takes a while to scoop up enough brain cells for a thought."

"Something like that," Sam said. He took a couple breaths. "Are you going to keep your clothes on? It's fine if you do, but we usually have it warmed up a few degrees and you might sweat."

"Maybe I'll take 'em off later," Bucky said. He stood, a little tentatively, and looked at Maria until she nodded. When she did, he came over and pressed a gentle kiss on first Sam's forehead, then Maria's, before returning to his seat. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Maria said for both of them, and turned to Sam. "Do you trust me to take care of you?" she said.

It was a set question that she'd been asking him since they had started this in earnest, signaling that she was in control now, at least once he answered. "Yes, I do, ma'am." Usually he would try to relax and aim for subspace, but since he wasn't going there tonight he just took a couple of deep breaths and waited for her next set of instructions.

"Good," she said. "Lie down, head somewhere near the middle of the bed."

"Yes, ma'am." Sam obeyed, and his legs hung over the edge of the bed. She nudged his feet apart a little bit until he felt like everything was on display, and then realized abruptly that yes, that was exactly it -- showing off the goods for Bucky. He wanted to look up and see Bucky's reaction, but he knew better.

Maria walked around to the head of the bed, drawing her fingers up his arm as she did; he shivered lightly. She sat cross-legged just in front of his head and brought a pillow down to go under his head before setting her fingers at his temples and rubbing small circles.

Ahhh. This wasn't teasing, it was deep relaxation, but that didn't mean the tease wasn't yet coming. "Shh," Maria said, probably to the thoughts she knew were crossing his mind. "Relax. Let me worry about it, whatever it is." Her thumbs traced gentle arcs on his forehead, and he sighed.

She moved her fingertips to his eyebrows, her touch very light, and then swept the backs of her fingers down his cheeks, under his jaw. With the barest amount of pressure -- just enough to keep it from tickling -- she scratched along his beard, and behind his ears.

He closed his eyes, hoping it was okay, because he rarely managed to keep his eyes open during a face massage on the best of days, and this evening hadn't been exactly easy. But when he did that, he heard Bucky take a sharp breath. "Can I come closer?" he asked, before Sam had time to wonder.

"Yes," Maria said.

"Can I sit on the edge of the bed and hold Sam's hand?" he asked.

"Yes, but can you tell me why?" she asked.

"I want to know he's still there," Bucky said.

 _Oh_. "I'm fine," Sam said, opening his eyes and watching Bucky start forward, but then stop to strip down to his undershirt and boxer briefs. They were, give or take a brand name, identical to Sam's, which struck him as amusing in the moment, but he managed to suppress his reaction down to a lazy smile.

Once Bucky was on the edge of the bed, Sam held out his hand, and Bucky took it, smiling gratefully. Maria continued with her gentle massage, rubbing behind his ears and over some of the good places in his scalp. Sam didn't bother to hold back his sighs, but he did his best to keep his pressure on Bucky's hand relatively even.

"That looks . . . nice," Bucky said.

"It is," Maria said. "Do you want to help?"

"Well, I don't --"

"It's fine," she said. "Give Sam your left hand and use your right hand to trace around his orbital socket -- very gently, very _very_ gently. Yes, like that."

Sam was in heaven, because now there were _two_ sets of hands on him -- well, one and a half, but close enough. Maria directed him where to go -- down to Sam's shoulders, along his clavicle, down his sternum, across his pectorals -- and the touches went from light and relaxing to a little more intensely massaging. And then, when Maria had Bucky drawing circles around Sam's right nipple, they went straight to arousing, and Sam groaned.

Maria made a pleased little sound. "Move back a little. You can keep doing that, or anything we've already done above there, okay?"

"Okay," Bucky said, and brushed gentle fingertips over Sam's heart. He kept that up -- light, arousing touches -- while Maria knelt over Sam and pressed her lips to his solar plexus.

"You are mine," she breathed into his skin, before marking him. It wasn't anything that wouldn't fade in a couple days, but it almost made Sam curl up in pleasure. Only the knowledge that she would stop if he did kept him flat. 

Bucky's fingers found a spot where his neck and shoulder met that set Sam on fire, and he squeezed Bucky's metal hand. Bucky squeezed back a little and kept rubbing that hollow until Sam cried Bucky's name.

"Oh," Bucky said, and moved his fingers gently to the other side.

Maria, meanwhile, was sucking bruises into the ridges just above Sam's hips, one of her favorite places on his body. Her breasts were brushing his cock gently, and she reached down with one hand and cupped him. "Like what you see?" she asked Bucky, a well-timed squeeze making certain he knew exactly what she meant.

"Oh, yeah," Bucky said, and his voice was low and rough with arousal. Sam couldn't concentrate enough to look and see if his body was reacting, too, not with Maria jacking him off slowly. "Are you gonna take him inside you?"

"I am," Maria said. "But not yet. Gonna tease him a little bit longer. Watch me." She ducked her head and took Sam's cock into her mouth, her hand still around the bottom half, the flat of her tongue rubbing the head.

Sam groaned again, longer this time, because Maria almost never let him come in her mouth but would almost always play with him for a good ten or fifteen minutes. And that was exactly what she did; between her mouth on him, her fingers playing with his balls and his perineum, and Bucky's hand mapping what felt like hundreds of erogenous zones just on his neck, Sam was frankly surprised he didn't go off in five seconds flat.

But he had enough control that when Maria finally sat up and said, "I think that's enough of that," Sam could still think hard enough to say, "Thank you, ma'am."

"You're welcome," Maria said warmly. "You're so good for me, you know that? You know not to come until I say you can." She crawled up the bed, past Bucky, and grabbed a condom out of the nightstand. "We still use condoms for easy cleanup," she said to Bucky as she ripped it open and started rolling it onto Sam. "We're both clean, we've only slept with each other in the last six months, and I can't get pregnant right now, but it's a lot less mess."

"Yeah," Bucky said; he sounded strangled, so Sam opened his eyes and looked up to see Bucky watching Maria's fingers avidly.

"You like this?" Maria asked. She swung one leg over Sam and reached down to position him at her entrance. "You like watching this part?"

"Yeah," Bucky breathed.

"Come closer if you want," she said, patting the bed next to her, near Sam's hip.

Bucky scooted down a few inches and turned, angling himself so he could see.

"Watch me, Bucky," Maria said, and used her fingers to spread herself a little bit; she tipped her hips forward in what couldn't have been a very comfortable angle, but it did push everything right into view. She took a deep breath in, let it out, and started sliding down Sam's cock.

Sam's eyes closed again, not entirely of his own free will, but he could almost feel Bucky's vision laser-hot against where he and Maria were joined. He knew what it looked like, Maria's flesh spread bright pink around his own dark purple skin, the color a little muted by the condom, and he knew she'd be feeling the stretch a little bit by the way she tightened around him.

When her hips were flush with Sam's, Bucky said, as hesitant as Sam had ever heard, "Can I -- can I touch just a little?"

"Yeah," Maria said, and relaxed a little; she wouldn't have to move for a few seconds.

Bucky's fingers, quick and light, skated down below Sam's navel, up to the bare millimeters of his cock that was showing, over the edge of the condom gently, and around the place where Sam disappeared into Maria. "You're so hot," Bucky said.

"Yeah," she said. She jumped a little when Bucky touched her clit, and Sam opened his eyes just in time to see her reach down to move his hand away carefully. "Not today," she said. "That's my job."

"Okay," Bucky said, and rubbed his fingers, slightly sticky, over Sam's hip. "Can I --" He made some indeterminate gesture.

"Can you what?" she asked. She'd tensed her thighs and pulled herself off Bucky a little and was sinking back down; it was very distracting, and Sam let himself be distracted.

"Can I touch myself?" Bucky said.

"Sure," she said.

"Can I come on Sam?" he asked, with a note to his voice that let Sam know he knew exactly how big a boon he was requesting.

"Yes," Maria said, "but not until after I've come."

"Okay," he said. "What about Sam?"

"Sam comes last," she said, and picked up her pace a bit.

Sam heard fabric swishing, and he looked over to see that Bucky had removed his last couple items of clothing. His cock was maybe a little shorter than Sam's own, but deliciously thick, and Sam's mouth watered with the desire to taste it. God, he hoped Bucky wanted to fuck him, because while Maria's dildo collection was prodigious, it didn't contain a dick that would come inside him, and that was the only thing he missed.

But right now he had Maria riding him, and Bucky jerking off mere inches away, and all he had to do was last until they were done and then he'd get his. 

Not that that was easy; Maria had moved on to cupping her own breasts and rolling the nipples between her fingers, and Sam spread his fingertips out on the bedspread to keep from touching her. Next, he knew, she'd rub just under the curve of one breast with one hand while sliding the other down the midline of her body -- which she did with a bitten-off moan -- and then she'd slide her first two fingers back around Sam's cock until they were wet enough.

Bucky watched that bit in utter fascination as well, and when Maria started rubbing her own clit, slow languorous circles at first, he stopped and grabbed the base of his own dick. "Fuck," he said, squeezing Sam's hand.

"Yes," Sam said, since it was about the only thing he could say. He was so close to orgasm that he was afraid that if either of them came, it would set him off. Maria was obviously getting close, too; she'd started biting her bottom lip, and soon, Sam knew, she'd start shaking. After that it was maybe thirty seconds to a minute before she'd pitch over the edge.

"Oh, God," Bucky said. "She's close, isn't she."

"Ask me, not him," Maria said.

"Yes, ma'am," Bucky said. "Are you close?"

"Yeah," she said. "Not far off. Can you hold off until I'm done? Can you be good for me like that?"

"Yes, ma'am," Bucky said again, his voice breaking on the honorific.

"Oh, I'm close," Maria said, a quiver in her voice, and . . . There it was, the shaking, and it was all Sam could do to hang on for the next minute or so.

Maria came hard; Sam could tell by the crack of her shoulders and the way she threw her head back. The "Ah!" that escaped her was not loud, but by her standards it might as well have been a scream at the top of her lungs. She ended with one hand on Sam's chest, the other still between her legs, and slowed her movements to almost nothing. He supposed it was to give him a chance to relax, but he knew what would come next and was still wound up tight.

After a few panting breaths and a couple of aftershocks, Maria sat up, both hands on her own thighs. "Bucky?" she said, her voice strong.

"Yes, ma'am?

"Are you ready to come for me?"

"Yes, ma'am." He hesitated, though.

"What is it?"

"Could you maybe touch me, ma'am? Just a hand on my shoulder or something." His right shoulder was towards her, the hand he was using in himself, and his left hand was still in Sam's.

"Yes, of course," she said, and reached out a hand to cup his deltoid. "Whenever you're ready, I want you to come for me and Sam, okay? Right here." She patted Sam's abs, which shouldn't have been nearly as hot as it was, but Sam hung on to control with his teeth clenched.

"Yes, ma'am," Bucky said, his breathing speeding up, and Sam turned his face a little to watch. He wasn't sure he could hold on through this, but he didn't want to miss it for anything.

Less than a minute later, Bucky panted a series of short breaths through his nose and then tensed, leaning over and spilling himself across Sam's midsection with a short, desperate noise in the back of his throat.

Sam's abs contracted without his conscious control, and he squeezed his eyes shut and thought real hard about the Knicks's current season, which was dismal. But all that didn't keep him from coming almost right away when Maria said, "Okay, Sam, baby, you can let go."

The orgasm surged through him like a tidal wave, crashing through everything in its way, and his only anchors were Bucky's hand on his and Maria's thighs tight around his hips. He floated, waiting for the waves to ebb a little; he felt Maria lift herself off of him, deal with the condom and some cursory cleanup, and then settle on one side of him. Bucky mirrored her, a little tentatively, and someone pulled the sheet over the three of them.

A couple minutes later, when Sam felt up to opening his eyes again, Maria was drawing gentle lines on his face and neck, and Bucky had a warm hand resting over his ribs. "Hello, gorgeous," she said, with the warm, private smile she reserved for moments like this.

"Hi," Sam said, because anything else was still a little beyond him.

Bucky's chuckle was also warm and private and a little dirty. "No brain cells yet?" he asked.

"Nuh-uh," Sam said, and let his eyes close again, the warmth of their bodies lulling him into a wonderful, safe place.

"Can I kiss him on the side of the head?" Bucky asked Maria quietly, and she must have nodded because Sam felt warm lips at his temple a moment later. 

Maria cupped a hand under Sam's jaw when Bucky pulled back, and then slid her fingers up to where Bucky had kissed. "Do you need anything?" she asked Sam gently.

"No, 'm perfect," Sam said. If he could sleep here all night, just like this, it would be the best thing ever.

"You _are_ perfect," Bucky said, although the way he stiffened briefly made Sam wonder dimly if he'd meant to do so.

"Yes, he is," Maria said, and Sam slitted his eyes enough to see her reach her hand over and hold it, hovering, over Bucky's face. "And so are you. May I touch you?"

"Please," Bucky whispered, and she cupped his face for a long moment.

Sam closed his eyes again and floated.

He woke up some time later when Bucky shifted.

"You okay?" Maria asked.

"Yeah, I just -- I'm going to sleep on the couch, if that's okay?"

"That's fine," she said. "I want you close by, but only as close as you can."

"Yeah," Bucky said. "Can I?"

"Yes."

Bucky dipped his head down and kissed Sam on the cheek, and then leaned over to kiss Maria; from the sound of it, it was on the lips, and Sam opened his eyes enough to see the end of it. It made something heat inside of him, to see Maria kissing Bucky, and he made a small, pleased noise in his throat.

As Bucky left the bed he said, "Can I ask a question?"

"Sure," Maria said, "but I'm about to fall asleep, so don't expect a novel of an answer."

"I gotcha." There was a pause, and then: "You two love each other."

Sam's eyes opened for real, and he looked at Maria. "I suppose yes," she said slowly, "although we haven't really had time to discuss it."

Which was an understatement, but Sam wasn't about to disagree or force the discussion right now. He didn't doubt that she loved him, but they never said the words, and he wanted to fix that. Now. Repeatedly. But he kept his mouth shut, because the conversation wasn't really about that.

"What's there to discuss?" Bucky said, a little sharply. "It's obvious."

"Sure," Maria said. "That still wasn't a question."

"You sure you want me here?" Bucky said, sitting on the edge of the couch with a soft thump.

"On the couch?"

"Generally. I -- I don't feel like I quite fit yet."

"Yes, to both," Maria said. "But that takes time. We just changed things. It'll take a little time to settle. But yes, we want you here." She took a deep breath. "We want to take care of you, and let you take care of us."

"More than anything," Sam added.

Bucky nodded. "Okay," he said. "Get some sleep. I can keep watch."

"JARVIS can keep watch," Maria said, correcting him. "You sleep, too."

"I'll try." He pulled the blanket off the back and wrapped it around him.

"It's all we can ask for," she said. "Good night, Bucky."

"Good night, Maria, Sam."

"Mm," Sam said. "Night." He pulled Maria's arm across his stomach, inhaled the smell of all three of them, mingling, and fell asleep with a smile on his face.


End file.
